


Deserted

by Gwen77



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Desert Island Fic, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-17
Updated: 2020-11-21
Packaged: 2021-03-01 02:07:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 12,542
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23187505
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gwen77/pseuds/Gwen77
Summary: A desert island AU. Canon divergence from 8x04.
Relationships: Jaime Lannister/Brienne of Tarth
Comments: 388
Kudos: 484





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Jaime and Brienne on a desert island, because why not at this point. This is an absurd AU, please don’t expect it to make any sense.

Brienne woke with a headache. Blazing sun overhead and sand crusting her cheek. The ship—she sat up, wincing. She was on an empty shore. There were fragments of wood scattered far and wide. Shipwreck. There had been a storm. She had tried to swim. She remembered very little else.  
  
She stood and looked along the shore, squinting for a sign of another survivor. Nothing. A yellow empty curve. She began to walk along it, mechanically, searching but without hope. She remembered the force of the waves that had shattered the little ship, the men caught up like paper dolls and disappearing among the waves. She hadn’t glimpsed Jaime. He’d been a prisoner, in the hold, and there hadn’t been time to search for him. She had braced herself so often for news of his death, and he’d had so many miraculous escapes—from his sister, from dragons, from the dragon queen herself—that it was oddly unsurprising to have lost him now. When he’d been paroled into her keeping, she’d hardly believed it; she’d tried to imagine Jaime on Tarth, her prisoner, and failed. It made far more sense that he should die at the last minute, and leave her here on this silent shore alone.  
  
The island was wooded. When she had walked the length of the shore as far as she could, and found no body, she retreated to the trees and had to sit down a moment. Her head throbbed dizzyingly with pain. She was desperately thirsty but the idea of getting up to search out a stream felt impossible. She counted out a full three minutes for rest and then got up, and began her wavering path through the wood.  
  
It was green and quiet, under a canopy of thick trees, and she came within a few minutes to a thin little stream, bright and bubbling, clear water. She drank, and somehow the release from thirst worked something else in her, shifted the dry hard feeling in her chest perilously. Tears. No. Absolutely not. She had to find food and make a shelter and discover what threats lurked in this place and think out her means to a rescue. By some miracle her belt hadn’t given out and she had Oathkeeper still at her waist, but her armour was lost to the sea and it would be important to keep alert. She looked around. The clearing was green and still. There was a hollow under one of the trees, thick with moss, where it might be possible to rest an hour before going on to find something better. She settled in there and leaned her head against the tree, closed her eyes. She wouldn’t sleep, she decided, it wasn’t safe. She would rest a moment. A hand seemed to touch her cheek and her eyes flew open. Nothing. The beginnings of a dream. She’d better not close her eyes again.  
  
Ten minutes passed and her eyes drifted shut. She opened them again, they drifted shut again. Then they flew open. There was a noise, the crackle of something approaching through the woods. Something fairly large. A deer or a small bear, perhaps. Her hand poised over Oathkeeper. The noise came closer and now she could hear the regular tramp and shuffle of it, and she knew it to be a man. Perhaps the island was inhabited after all. Her heart was behaving ridiculously. It was _not_ Jaime, she told herself, just as he came stumbling into the clearing and stood staring at her. Of course it was Jaime.

He looked—bad. He’d looked bad for a long time, ever since he’d emerged from the dungeons and found himself Brienne’s prisoner, but now he looked even worse. Ill. Half-delirious. He was staring at her as if she was a hallucination. She stood, strode to him, took hold of his arms: he was shaking, a slow continuous shudder. She hauled him to the stream and forced him to sit down, dashed the water over his face and gave him a mouthful to drink out of her cupped hands. That woke him up enough that he looked at her properly, saw her.  
  
“Brienne,” he said. That was all. It made the stupid trembling feeling in her chest and belly begin again and she had to scowl to suppress it. He put his hand out and touched her cheek, just grazing it. “You’re alive.”  
  
“Obviously,” she said and he smiled, a wavering, wondering thing, utterly awful. She withdrew from his touch. “I don’t think there are people here.”  
  
“Oh,” he said vaguely. After a while, he bent over the stream and drank again, plunged his face into the water to the neck and then shook his head. There were little silver droplets in his eyelashes and beard when he looked at her again, his gaze clear and awake and still full of that infuriating wonder. _I hate him_ , she heard herself think and felt shock run through her. Was she still so bitter? She hadn’t felt bitter on the ship, with her duty plain before her and Jaime tucked away in the hold. She’d felt resigned, tired, sensible. Hollowed out. But now—  
  
“What should we do?” Jaime asked. “Where are we, exactly, do you know?”  
  
“I don’t know,” she answered, trying to sound practical and managing only to sound brittle. “We hadn’t reached the Narrow Seas, I know that. And the gale blew us off course. I don’t know this island.”  
  
“So we don’t know who would see a signal,” he said. “If anyone would.”  
  
“No,” she said.  
  
Jaime sighed and stretched his arms, wincing.  
  
“Well, then,” he said. “It’s just you and me and a deserted island, for the rest of our lives. Wonderful.”  
  
She said nothing. She looked at a cluster of dark trees on a far hill beyond his shoulder, the glimmer of the sea beyond them. She could feel his eyes on her. He sighed again.  
  
“You could kill me,” he suggested. “If you like.” The false note of lightness in his voice disappeared. “I’d let you.”  
  
“Do it yourself,” Brienne snarled, rage overtaking her so fast it left her breathless. “If you’re so—” She caught herself. No. Now was hardly the moment. She got up. “We have to find shelter.”  
  
“Brienne—”  
  
“Did you salvage anything we could use?” she asked. “An axe? Anything?”  
  
He shook his head.  
  
“Some wine,” he said. “A knife. Some other bits and pieces. Nothing of use.”  
  
“Bring what you have,” she said. “We’ll have to find a cave, before night comes.”  
  
“Right,” he said. He hesitated, looking at her, and she turned away to survey the horizon, get some sense of the layout of the island. After a while, she heard him shuffle off the way he had come and she closed her eyes. _You could kill me,_ he’d said, joking and not joking. She’d rarely been so tempted.


	2. Chapter 2

They found several caves, in the end. The hills were honeycombed with them. All were damp, some had water flowing through them, and one had bats. The sun was beginning to set as they explored and soon the air had turned chill and a driving rain set in, thick and fast and freezing. They ducked into the next cave they came to and found it to be the best so far: almost dry, almost clean, and deep enough to provide some shelter. It was also very small, eight feet across. They lay back to back under the ragged blanket that Jaime had salvaged from the wreck and left to dry out on the beach—stiff with salt and torn, it stank and barely warmed but it was better than nothing—and listened to the rain and the silence.

Brienne counted her breaths. Jaime was rigid behind her, awake and miserably on edge. The night grew colder and colder as twilight faded and the clouds parted and a full moon rode up the sky, shed its silvery lights and shadows all around them. She had to clench her teeth to keep them from chattering.

“This is stupid, Brienne,” Jaime said at length. “You were never stupid before.”

“I d-don’t.” She gritted her teeth. Jaime was up on his elbow, looking down at her, and she was shivering with the cold despite her best efforts at stillness. Fine. Fine. He was right and she would not be stupidly sentimental about this. It was all to do with survival. She turned, reluctantly, and then his arms were about her and his cheek was against her cheek and she could feel the heat of his breathing, the length of him all down her body. Her stomach knotted and her cheeks went hot. Winterfell. The cold was the same, the dirt and the desperation and the moonlight, and Jaime’s body was thinner and his touch less confident but he was the same too. She could feel the rapid hammer of his heart as he gathered her closer. She heard him draw breath to speak, and swallowed hard and got her words out, first. “Don’t. Say. Anything.”

His breath caught on silence. They lay there and his warmth spread into her, gradually, and she felt his shivering settle down as hers did too. His beard scratched her cheek. His open palm was on her hip, firm and strong. The stump was between them. His thigh was between her thighs. Survival, she reminded herself. She was not going to be sentimental or—his thigh shifted, between hers, and a hot shiver went through her stomach. No. No sentiment—no anything. Jaime swore softly, under his breath.

“Sorry,” he said and it took her a moment to realise why. She went hot all over. Jaime must feel it, close as he was. Her breathing had turned shallow. She jerked out of his arms and turned her back to him again, put her hot face into the cool crook of her arm. She could survive the cold. She’d rather face the cold. She felt Jaime silently ease away from her, an inch of cool air slipping between them. His hand withdrew from her hip. Then it came back.

“Brienne,” he said, so low that she could hardly hear the words. She felt him form them, his lips brushing her ear. “I’m not—I wouldn’t—you can’t think I’d force you.”

That astonished her so much that she sat up to stare down at him, at the gleam of his eyes in the moonlight.

“You can’t think you _could_ ,” she pointed out.

“That too,” he agreed. “So what are you afraid of?”

“I’m not _afraid_ ,” she said furiously, aware that she was lying, that the sick feeling in her stomach was a compound of shame and desire and something, yes, almost like terror. It was grotesque to still want him, after everything. It was pathetic. “I just don’t. I.” She stopped.

“Maidenly modesty?” Jaime suggested, flippantly, and she came to her feet, then, to keep from throttling him. He got up too, facing her, his face far grimmer than his voice had been.

“I think you should find another cave,” she said at last, when she was sure that her voice wouldn’t shake. “Or I will.”

“You’ll freeze,” Jaime said.

“I don’t care,” she said and checked. Her voice had gone all wrong, choked and furious. _Maidenly modesty._ How dare he. Jaime took a step forward, towards her.

“Go on,” he said. “Come on, Brienne. _Be_ angry.”

She put up her hand to warn him off. The hot rage chilled, froze, hardened again.

“I told you,” she said. “I’m not going to kill you. If you’re so desperate to die, do it yourself.”

She found another cave in the end, smaller and damper and more open to the wind, but not too bad. She could warm herself if she curled right into her body, the way she wanted to, and it was possible to sleep like that as it could never have been with Jaime at her back. She slept badly, fitfully, but she did sleep and in the morning she woke up alone to a broad hot day, with a crick in her back and the ragged salt-stiffened blanket draped carefully over her shoulders. The image of Jaime bringing her that in the night —finding her asleep, bending over her to tuck it around her with care—brought a raw feeling into her throat. She remembered so well that little pucker that came into his brow when he suddenly decided to be careful with her, tender. In Winterfell—

She got up. Food. Food was the next thing. Last night, they had both been too sick and exhausted to notice their hunger. This morning she was ravenous. 

She went back to the woods and found herself in another clearing, by a broader stream that opened out into a small lake. She washed her face and drank and then looked again at the murmuring water. She longed for a bathe, for a swim even. She glanced over her shoulder. The dense trees were all about her and very quiet. No hint of a movement. She stripped to her small-clothes, swiftly, and then hesitated. She had no other clothes. It would be foolish to soak these in the water and in any case they needed washing as much as anything else. She took them off hastily and slipped quickly into the water, felt the immediate ease to her limbs. It was softly cool water, not warm but not freezing, and lapped gently about her as she rinsed her filthy tunic and breeches and small-clothes, wrung them out and laid them to dry on the shore. The bottom of the lake was cool and gritty like sand. She kicked off and then swam, her body rejoicing in the familiar long-denied pleasure. The sense of control. The freedom. It was like nothing else. She turned over onto her back. The sun was warm on her face. She was still hungry but she couldn’t part from the lake so soon.

“There’s rabbit,” Jaime’s voice said at a distance and she almost missed her stroke. She turned and saw him on the shore, his eyes carefully averted from her. _Maidenly modesty_ , he had said last night, mocking, and the anger that accompanied the memory flashed back to life. She hauled herself out of the water at his feet, and turned to pick up her clothes, ignoring his faint gasp behind her.   
  


“Rabbit?” she said, turning to face him with her tunic in her hand and ignoring the burning flush that was beginning to scald up her neck and cheek. It was meaningless.

“The place is full of them,” Jaime said, looking carefully at her ear. “I killed a few. Got a fire going. Come when you’re.” An infinitesimal break in his voice. “When you’re ready.”

“Where?”

”Just by the cave,” he said. “The first cave.”   
  
He fled. Her nakedness made him uncomfortable now, it seemed. Perhaps—no. There was no point dwelling on what her body meant to him or what it had once meant to him and how much of all that, at Winterfell, had been well-meant lies. The point was that the island was apparently full of rabbits and so they wouldn’t starve. She dragged her damp clothes on and raked her fingers through her hair and went after him. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi guys, I’m self-isolating and being very bad at working from home today. Hence two chapters of this nonsense AU in a day. Also I know nothing about desert islands or survival or geography or rabbit habitats, please suspend your disbelief accordingly.


	3. Chapter 3

The first month went better than she had expected. There was rabbit, and fish, and all kinds of fruit. More cargo from the ship washed up. They found better shelter: a large cave, dry and deep, that kept out the cold and the rain at night and made it possible to sleep in relative peace, a few feet apart. They made a kind of door, out of driftwood. They lit fires on the beach each night, as a signal and to roast the day's catch. There was plenty to do and most of it could be done in silence.

That was the first month. After that, there was less to do. There was only sleeping, hunting, gathering wood for the fire, and swimming. The nights grew warmer as the days passed and they lay out on the beach by the fire for longer and longer each night. The silence became oppressive, pointed. Jaime said nothing, but he looked at her more and more intently as the days passed and she found fewer and fewer excuses for not looking back, fewer and fewer things to which she could redirect her attention. And her own mind betrayed her. She could swim, and hunt, and light the fire, but that was all. There was nothing else: no mission, no immediate duty, no future duty, no one to serve or save. There had been no response to their signal and the likeliest possibility was that Daenerys Targaryen had already assumed them lost at sea and appointed a new lord over Tarth. There was nothing to think about, or plan for, or do. It was appalling.

Swimming became her solace, for a time. She swam hours, morning and evening, letting the water carry her and counting her strokes and ignoring the memories as best she could. But the memories were inescapable. Each night, her dreams were horribly vivid and each day fragments of the dreams came back, over and over. Renly was offering her his hand for the dance, and then he screamed at her touch, as if in pain, his hand blackening and then burning. Lady Catelyn stood over her in silence with the red wound in her throat and Jaime's severed head in her hand. She dreamt every kind of horrible nonsense that could wake her, sweating and shuddering and sometimes weeping, several times a night. And of course she dreamt of Jaime. Jaime dying at the Wall; Jaime leaving her; Jaime laughing at her; Jaime, Jaime, Jaime. She knew she had said his name aloud, at least once, because he had answered her in a startled voice, and she had had to reply that it was nothing and know that he knew that she dreamt of him. 

"Do you want to spar?" she said to him, one morning after a particularly horrible dream—Jaime dying at her feet, the dragon roaring overhead, Oathkeeper bloody and melting in her hand—and he nodded.

"All right."

So they sparred every day, and that was another hour that she had something to do besides think and remember. Jaime was out of practice at first, badly out of practice and out of form, and she found herself falling into more of a coaching stance with him. He smiled a little, wryly, as she adjusted her strength to his weakness but he said nothing and she said nothing and the silence hung between them like a tangible thing, a gathering storm cloud that would inevitably, someday, break.

It broke one afternoon, for no particular reason that she could afterwards understand. They had sparred. Jaime had been better, blocking her at full strength and even, once, breaking her guard and knocking her down. They lay on the grass, side by side and breathing hard, satisfied, and then Jaime's hand brushed over hers. He withdrew it instantly, as if burned, and she found that her chest was suddenly burning with rage, her eyes hot. She shut them. She felt Jaime turn to look at her and heard his little intake of breath. The quality of the silence changed. He was waiting. She couldn't open her eyes.

"Brienne of Tarth a coward," Jaime said, in a marvelling voice. "Who would have thought it?"

She knew he was goading her deliberately, trying to provoke the words out of her, but the knowledge did nothing to help. He'd always known just what to say to take her off her guard, to break her self-control. She sat up and put her head in her hands to stop herself from hitting him. She wasn't going to hit him. If she looked at him, she would undoubtedly hit him. 

"What do you _want_?" she said to the horizon. "Why—what's the point of this, now?" 

"Passes the time," Jaime said lightly and that, as he had known it would, forced her to look at him, to glare. Again, the look on his face was utterly at odds with the flippant words. There was a muscle twitching in his jaw and his eyes were dark and miserable. Her anger collided with some other feeling that that expression brought out in her and she looked away again.

"All right," she said, at last. "What is it you want me to say?" 

Jaime said nothing and she made herself look at him again, made herself hold his gaze.

"Come on," she said. "You wanted me to tell you—to be angry. All right. I _am_ angry. What more do you want?"

He opened his mouth and closed it again. The misery deepened in his face. 

"Well then," Brienne said, and got to her feet. "Until you know—”

"I want you to tell me," Jaime said, scrambling to his feet too. He was looking at her now with that unbearable expression she remembered from Winterfell, all longing, all lies. "Just. _Tell_ me you hate me."

Her throat closed. Jaime's face blurred in her vision.

"I can't," she said curtly and he exhaled.

"Brienne," he said in a softer voice, coming closer, and she retreated. Her heart was beating thickly in her throat and side. Snow seemed to swirl about her. 

"It isn't hatred," she said at last. "It's." Her breath came short, but his accusation of cowardice still stung and she made herself go on. "You were never the man I thought you were." 

He flinched, very slightly, but his gaze never wavered.

"I know that," he said. "I told you."

"I wanted you to be," she said, half in a whisper, and he flinched more sharply then, his gaze dipping away from her. The lines about his mouth deepened into pain.

"I'm sorry," he said. And there it was, what he'd been goading her to let him say all this time. He was sorry that he'd let her make herself a fool over him, let her love him and believe in him and _beg_ him—she sucked in a breath at that memory, the worst memory, the look of pity in his face when her voice had broken on the word _please_. It seemed to tower over her like a wave, the grief and humiliation and utter loneliness of that moment. Then the wave broke, passed over her and through her and she felt an odd sense of peace. She'd loved him. He hadn't loved her. He'd loved Cersei. And he was sorry he'd let her think otherwise. That was all. 

"It's all right," she said and he gave her a startled look that made her, incongruously, almost want to laugh. He looked so guilty, so forlorn. "It doesn't matter now."

"Oh," Jaime said blankly and she smiled at him, the first time she had smiled at him since. She couldn't remember.

"We'll spar again," she said. "Tomorrow."

"Right," he said, in the same blank voice. "Tomorrow."

She'd had her morning swim already but she found that her feet were taking her back to the lake now. She plunged in, clothed, and let the cool water pass over her flushed face. She felt light-headed and strange. She realised now that she had been carrying a burden of hope or expectation or _something_ that Jaime's apology, his acceptance that he had never been the man she took him for—had never loved her—had freed her from. And now it was over. There was a salt taste in her mouth but she wasn't, she thought, really going to weep over it again. She'd cried all the tears she was going to. The fresh water enclosed her, chill and clear and welcoming, and the day was bright. She swam for an hour, two hours, almost three; when she came out of the water, her limbs shook with exhaustion and her chest heaved and her head was as empty as a bell. That night, her sleep brought no dreams at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone reading and commenting on this madness and, especially, to those of you who taught me about rabbit-induced starvation being a thing. It's much appreciated!


	4. Chapter 4

Peace, it turned out, was a flickering and inconstant visitor. She still had dreams that pierced her with sadness in the morning—very few dreams of sheer horror, now, but mundane dreams of happiness which were almost more painful in their aftereffect. Once she dreamt that Jaime lay asleep in her bed in Tarth, on a sunlit morning, with the wind blowing off the sea through the open windows and his head on her arm. Once she dreamt that she was with Jaime and her father in Lady Sansa’s hall at Winterfell, and her father had laughed at something Jaime had said and they had both smiled at her. Gentle dreams, that left a shadow of melancholy over the whole day once they had passed. And sometimes, even awake, she looked at Jaime—fishing in the lake, his head bowed and streaks of grey in his hair and beard—and longing tightened in her chest so that she could hardly breathe. But these were only moments. At other times, she sat by the fire and looked out to sea and thought of the possibility that she and Jaime would die on this island, together and alone, with nothing between them but guilt and memory, and felt nothing but a kind of wry acceptance. It was better, she supposed, than falling to the White Walkers. It was better than so many of the things that might have happened.

Much of the constraint between herself and Jaime had vanished after their conversation. She knew he was still guilt-ridden and grief-stricken, still mourning his sister, and he was more silent and sad than she had ever known him. But he answered quietly enough when she spoke to him, now, and he no longer pushed or goaded her to talk about the past. They talked mainly of the ordinary decisions of each day, shelter and water and food and fire. Sometimes they spoke—cautiously, carefully—of politics, of Daenerys Targaryen and her childlessness and what might become of the Seven Kingdoms now. The North, Jaime thought, would certainly rebel sooner or later but Lady Sansa was too wary—especially since the death of her brother—to make it soon. Daenerys was obviously mad but still shrewd in her madness. Tyrion would know how to use his influence to guide her, for a time. It all felt curiously distant, even though some part of her longed to be by Lady Sansa’s side when the moment for rebellion came. The island left her no choice and the absence of choice brought a certain peace of its own.

Then Jaime fell sick—a small scrape of the ankle against a stone, which turned putrid and brought on a fever. His sickness broke the last of the constraint. All they had for the wound was wine and Jaime swore and sweated and struggled and wept and held onto her arm through the pain, for eleven nights. The morning after the fever broke, she woke next to him to find his head on her shoulder and his eyes on her face. Somehow, in the early light, it seemed natural to touch him, to smooth back the hair from his forehead. His eyes closed when she did that. The sun tipped his eyelashes with gold. He was so extraordinarily beautiful: familiarity had almost inured her to the fact but not quite, not just now.

His eyes opened, then, as she was looking at him, and she dropped her hand away hastily. Her face was burning. The corners of his mouth tilted.

”Ser Brienne,” he murmured and touched her—his fingertips brushing her cheek, very light, but it was enough. She’d never been good at concealing these things from him. He looked at her for another long excruciating moment and then leaned up to kiss her. Her head jerked back, instinctively, and he sighed and fell back, letting her go.

”I’m sorry,” he said. “But you want to. Maybe you don’t—but you _want_ me, Brienne. I know enough to know that.”

”That’s not,” she began and then stopped as an entirely new thought came to her. _Why not?_ Everything was gone. Cersei. Tarth. Duty. Honour. All that was left was this island and Jaime and if he wanted to and she wanted to—why not? What did it matter? Nothing mattered now.

Jaime’s resigned expression dropped to amazement so quickly, when she turned back to him, that it was almost funny. When she kissed him, it was awkward and off-centre and he was so surprised that he didn’t respond at all at first. But she knew, now, that he wanted her at least enough for this. When he had come to her at Winterfell, he had taught her that much: desire couldn’t be feigned, imagined, a delusion, whatever else could. He was soon kissing her back, and his hand was soon fumbling down her body, and she closed her eyes against the pleasure and concentrated as hard as she could on not saying anything intelligible. It was odd what she had forgotten. She had thought she remembered it all with a painful, an embarrassing, vividness but. There were all sorts of things she had forgotten that came back only with the touch of his bare skin on hers.

”You,” Jaime said afterwards, running his hand down her side. “Your—skin. I forgot.” His voice was dazed with pleasure and she smiled at him, marvelling at how simple it could be. Skin. Bodies. Pleasure. No promises made, no betrayals possible. Jaime kissed her shoulder. Peace crept back over her. Last time, this moment, just after, had been terrible: she’d been in a kind of terror of hope, not knowing what he felt or would do or say, not knowing what the night had meant to him. Now she knew. She could still hear the sound of hooves as he rode away— _for Cersei _. Cersei was dead, and so here he was with her. The only woman on this island, as she had been the only woman he could have on Winterfell.__

”What are you thinking?” Jaime asked, watching her, a little crease in his brow.

She shook her head. Her throat was foolishly, meaninglessly tight.

“Nothing,” she answered and sat up. “I’m going for a swim.”

”Now?” His voice turned teasing. “I thought I’d tired you out.”

She turned to find him smiling at her, open and joyful and still faintly dazed. She had to kiss him when he smiled like that and he sighed into the kiss and then rolled them over, pinned her wrists above her head with the loose grip of one hand.

”Stay with me,” he said lightly, mock-pleadingly, and then he heard his own words and his face changed, darkened. Guilt. She was so tired of his guilt.

”Stop it,” she said. “I told you. It doesn’t matter now.”

”Right,” Jaime said but the look of bleakness only deepened in his face. It angered her suddenly that he should think her so fragile—as if he’d crippled or broken her in that one moment. He looked at her as if he thought he’d murdered her.

”I’m not _weak_ ,” she said, between her teeth, glaring at him. His smile in reply came as an effort, she saw, but it was better than the bleak look. 

”Is that a challenge, Ser?” he asked, his grip tightening on her wrists and of course he was nothing like strong enough to hold her down—even two-handed, he would hardly have been able to—but she let her wrists slacken under his grip, let them both pretend otherwise for a few sweet minutes. Afterwards, she went for a swim and let the peaceful, lonely water cool away the burning in her throat and chest. Nothing mattered, here, she reminded herself. Nothing. It was four nights later that they saw the approaching sails.


	5. Chapter 5

Brienne spent the first week at sea in a kind of daze. The world had changed beyond recognition in the short half-year that she and Jaime had spent on their island. Tyrion, Hand of the King, was the Hand of Bran Stark. It was Bran Stark who had let him set out on this search for his brother. Bran Stark was King. And the North was free.

“Tarth is still yours,” Tyrion said to her, as she stood watching the empty sea. The island was gone. It had vanished to a speck and then to nothing days ago. She had forgotten how it felt to be at sea, the high winds and the rock and sway underfoot. Dizzying. Dazed. “But the King asked me—if I found you—to offer you a place at King’s Landing. On the small council.”

“What place?” she asked, mechanically. She felt nothing. The conversation was a pointless game, played to pass the time: his words, her words, back and forth, with Jaime their stiff and silent audience. The pleasant grit of the island, which seemed to have become part of her own skin, was all washed away and she felt raw and sore under the heavy armour. Even armour felt wrong to her now, awkward and clanking. She longed for a swim.

“Kingsguard,” Tyrion Lannister said, and she heard a small intake of breath beside her. Jaime. Yes. That word meant something to him, still. She couldn’t turn her head to look at him. It all meant so little to her now.

“Ser Brienne,” Tyrion said, more slowly, as if he thought her ill or deaf. “Will you accept the post of Lord Commander of the Kingsguard?”

Jaime made an articulate sound then, almost a word, an _oh_ or _ah._ An odd sensation of pain glanced through her breast, then vanished. Did he still want that title for himself, after everything? Meaningless, all of it.

”No,” Brienne said finally, dredging up the word with an effort. “No. I want to go home.”

“The King will be disappointed,” Tyrion said formally. “Jaime, he has asked me to offer you —”

”No,” Jaime said in a ragged voice and Tyrion sighed.

”I know you need time,” he said. “Both of you. But you’re _needed_. Both of you. This peace—it won’t last. Dorne—”

He went on talking, his familiar voice rising and falling, his familiar gestures coming and going. The sea was blue and glittering. Jaime put his hand on hers and she looked down at it. Tyrion stopped talking.

”I want to marry you,” Jaime said in a low voice. “Will you?”

“What,” Tyrion said faintly and then there was silence. Somewhere, a gull called to another gull, harsh and clear and far away. 

“Brienne,” Jaime said and she managed, at last, to shake her head.

”I want to go home,” she said.

”I know,” Jaime said. “Let me come with you. I—there’s nowhere else for me, Brienne. Nowhere but with you.”

At that, she had to look at him. He looked as desolate and weary as he had ever looked, as if there had been no rescue and they were still alone and trapped together on that empty island. Nowhere else for him. Cersei. It always came back to Cersei. King’s Landing, the Kingsguard, his brother, his duty—nothing meant a thing to him without Cersei. It was all desert. And so now he wanted to crawl home with her and hide in her house. She was about to refuse, when the old seductive thought returned to her. Why not? What did it matter, now? What did anything matter?

”You _could_ marry,” Tyrion said thoughtfully. “Casterly Rock is a ruin but Tarth still needs heirs.”

”Shut _up_ , Tyrion,” Jaime said, between his teeth, as Brienne flinched. Heirs. Children. No. She could be a haven for Jaime in his desolation—what did it matter—but she could not bring children into a marriage like that. It would be monstrous. 

“I’m sorry,” she said and turned her gaze back to sea. “I can’t.”

”What’s happened to you?” Tyrion demanded, in a suddenly ringing voice. “You’re—Brienne of Tarth! What do you mean to do with yourself, if you won’t serve your King and you won’t serve Tarth? Who will you serve?”

”No one,” Brienne said and realised with a hollow shock that it was true. Something really had happened to her on the island. She was scoured clean of all her old ambition and yearning, all her old questing fervour. All she wanted was to go home. She would swim in the small cove by the castle and sit in her hall and listen to the troubles and quarrels of her tenants on Tarth; that would be all her service. It would be quiet and she had learned, on the island, to love quiet.   
  
Neither of the Lannister brothers found any answer to her last words. After a while, she went below deck and stripped off her armour and Oathkeeper and slept.

She dreamt that Lady Sansa stood over her with a bare sword. She was supposed to say her words, pledge her fealty, but she didn’t. Lady Sansa was looking at her with astonished and betrayed eyes and then a White Walker came and Brienne reached for Oathkeeper at her belt and found it empty. Empty hands. Empty mind. She stood stupid and rooted to the ground as the White Walker approached, glistening, and then Jaime’s hand was on her shoulder and she woke.

”A dream,” he said, as she clutched at him. “You’re dreaming.”

”Oathkeeper,” she said thickly and he reached it to her without a word. She sat up in bed and gripped it, laying it across her knees and seeing her own far reflection in the gleaming blade. Oathkeeper. Jaime stood silent beside the bed, watching her handle the sword, and the aching memory of the first time he had done that came over her. Jaime had been so kind to her that day, so unmixedly and purely kind. She looked up at him.

”What will you do?” she asked, and he shrugged.

“I don’t know. Whatever Tyrion tells me to.”

”You could,” she said, and hesitated. In sleep, she had somehow lost her island sense of remoteness from things, the feeling that nothing mattered. She missed it but it was gone. “Don’t you want to be Lord Commander of the Kingsguard?”

“No,” he said flatly. “I want you, Brienne. There’s nothing else. No one else.”

She said nothing, but her ears heated uncomfortably. Jaime always said these things as if they were nothing, obvious truths, but she could never take them simply. Even now, despite everything, there was a queasy sort of excitement in hearing him say he wanted her. He saw that she had reddened, and smiled. It was meant to be a teasing smile but it came out wrong, misshapen.

”But,” he said in a would-be light voice, on a sigh. “As you won’t have me, I may as well go where I’m told. Tyrion is the last.” He swallowed. “The last of my family. I’ll go where he tells me.”

She said nothing. The silence thickened between them. He made as if to go, beginning to turn away, and she knew she ought to let him go and couldn’t. She caught at his arm. He looked at her hand on his arm and then down at her face; at his expression, her hand dropped away as if she had been scalded. 

”No,” he said. “No, Brienne. Not here, not like that.”

The humiliation of rejection never changed, it seemed, whatever form it took. She was standing in her father’s hall and a red rose lay at her feet. She was at Renly’s ball and they were all laughing at her. She was in the courtyard at Winterfell and he was pushing her away as if she was a contamination. She put her hands back in her lap and didn’t look at him.

” _Marry_ me,” Jaime said again, abruptly. “You—you do care for me, Brienne. I know you do. Let it mean something. Why not?”

“Why do you want to?” she asked, despairingly. 

“I love you,” he said impatiently. “You know that. There’s no one else.”

She swallowed painfully. Her throat felt raw.

”You could meet someone,” she said at last. “Someone else.”

Jaime made an irritated noise but she drove on. Her courage was coming back to her, thank the gods.

”I know you loved Cersei,” she said and a new silence fell. Jaime was very still. “I know I can’t understand how you feel, without her. But you might still—Jaime, you might love someone else. Someday. The same way.”

”No,” he said. “Not the same way.”

Silence fell again. Jaime sat down beside her on the bed. His hand traced a slow path through her hair.

”I don’t know how else to tell you this,” he said in a defeated voice. “I love you. There can’t be someone else, Brienne. There never could. I’ve loved you since—Harrenhal, probably. I’m not as young as you are. There won’t ever be anyone else.”

“Cersei,” Brienne said in a whisper and his hand dropped from her hair.

”She’s dead,” he said in a harder voice. “You’re not jealous of the dead, Brienne.”

She was. When he put it like that, so baldly, it was inescapably true. She wanted to mean as much to him as Cersei had meant and that was impossible. He sat looking at her and she looked out at the blue ocean and thought of Jaime with nowhere else to go and of Tarth. Tarth needed an heir. Jaime loved her, in his way, with what was left of his love. A child might come of that and grow up well enough, happy enough. How much had her father loved her mother, after all? 

“Marry me,” Jaime said again and she shook her head and then nodded. It seemed less trouble than resisting and she could no longer think of any reason why she should resist. The island feeling was lapping at her again, seductive, quieting.

“Is that a yes?” Jaime asked, an edge of excitement to his voice, and she nodded again. Why not. Married or unmarried, she wanted Jaime with her and he wanted to come. What did it matter what they called it?

“Yes,” she said and Jaime bent his head and kissed her hand. She felt the heat of his tears.

”Thank you,” he said, as she took her hand away, discomfited by gallantry as always. “I’ll be a good husband to you, Brienne. I swear it.”

 _They make you swear and swear._ She nodded, accepting the promise, and let him kiss her. When she had first set out to sea, before the shipwreck, they had paroled Jaime to her—her prisoner, to be held on Tarth. And so it would be now. Jaime would be with her on Tarth, more willing to be there than anywhere other than the rubble under the Red Keep. And she would keep him alive and stand guard, as best she could, against the memory of Cersei. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m sorry to have disappeared so long—2020 has been a weird year and my brain has only just returned, rustily, to fic mode. Anyone still reading: thank you for your enormous patience! And I’m sorry.


	6. Chapter 6

The wedding was a nightmare. Brienne’s imagination had somehow skated over the question of the wedding—she had vaguely envisaged a quiet exchange of vows somewhere, in the small sept on Tarth perhaps, and that was all. When she could think at all, she had thought far more about the marriage than about the wedding, about what to do with and for Jaime when he was with her on Tarth. Her imagination had centred on Tarth, her and Jaime and the sea. But the wedding was not to be on Tarth. Tyrion and the King and the entire small council were in agreement on that. As the first noble wedding to take place since the end of the war, it was to be held in King’s Landing and celebrated with appalling pomp and ceremony.

After the island, King’s Landing came as a shock: so many faces, voices, memories. She had forgotten how many distant relations she had, how many fourth cousins and half-aunts and great-uncles there were. Numberless Lannisters seemed to have survived the war, and to be hanging about the royal court with little to do but titter and stare and gossip. Lady Sansa came from the North, hugged Brienne and gave Jaime a long unfriendly stare. Gendry Baratheon came, as was his duty as Lord of the Stormlands. Arya Stark came, for her own opaque reasons. Bronn was there, Master of Coin. And there was Podrick. Ser Podrick now, Podrick of the Kingsguard, his eyes full of emotion at the sight of her. She had forgotten how many people there were in the world, how many threads of duty and memory and love and grief had held her, before the island. She seemed to have lost Jaime in that surging crowd. He was borne off on the tide of people and lost.

King’s Landing must be even worse for him than it was for her, she thought. He had lived here with Cersei, and tried and failed to die with her here. No wonder he was so quiet and still, no wonder he seemed to vanish deeper and deeper into some inner world as the days went by and more and more people came to lay claim to Brienne. They could not share a bed in King’s Landing. Now that they were to be married, the proprieties had to be observed. They met, decorously, at meals and in crowds. Even to get away for a walk in one of the gardens would have been difficult and Brienne, somehow, was unable to suggest it. Jaime was too far away. The atmosphere of the place was too thick. She found that she and Jaime were being polite to each other, distantly polite, like any bride and groom of noble birth whose marriage had been arranged over their heads as a matter of duty. It was hard to remember Winterfell. Impossible to remember the island.   
  
On the wedding day itself, she found that she was overcome with panic. They had strapped her into a white dress that did little to conceal her deficiencies; crowds of people were eying her critically as she was escorted into a high-ceilinged and echoing sept; the man waiting for her there was a stranger, remote and polite and willing to endure her company for the sake of a home on Tarth. It was as if she had never left her father’s house at all, never taken up a sword; all this was so precisely the stuff of her nightmares as a girl. They had taken Oathkeeper from her, left it lying in a corner of her bedchamber, disregarded. How had she surrendered to this? How could she have thought it didn’t matter? Podrick, Lady Sansa, Arya—all had asked her some version of the same question: _are you sure?_ It was impossible to be sure of anything in the din and confusion of this place. 

Then Jaime was looking at her and she was looking at him. He was clean-shaven for the wedding and he looked strangely sad and sober, but he was no stranger. This was Jaime, whose face she knew better than her own by now. _There’s nowhere else _,__ he had said to her on the ship. _No one else._ She was suddenly and sharply aware of all the things she might still do and be, if she turned now and declared herself unsure. Commander of the Kingsguard. Sworn sword to Sansa Stark. A knight of the seven kingdoms. Even Arya’s companion on her travels, if all she wanted was an escape from all this. Arya would probably know how to find her island again, if she wanted to.

“You may now cloak the bride,” the septon said in his creaking voice. Jaime didn’t move.

”Do you still want to?” he said, so quietly that no one but Brienne and the septon could hear. “You don’t have to.”

The septon went red with outrage. Brienne couldn’t speak. Jaime waited. A hush spread as the delay extended. Jaime’s expression was quiet and resigned. He was _expecting_ her to desert him now, she realised suddenly. He had been expecting it for weeks. Her throat went tight. She put her hand to the clasp of her cloak.

”Here,” she said roughly. “Take it off.”

He took it off, fumbling with his one hand as muttering and giggling spread among the crowd. The Lannister cloak was all cloth of gold, of course, oppressively thick and heavy, and there was a complicated clasp that needed their joint hands to manage.

“My lords and my ladies,” the septon said, in a voice of deep disapproval, once the old cloak was off and the new cloak was on. “We stand here—”

The words droned on. Brienne kept her eyes on Jaime, watching the amazement that dawned and deepened in his face as the ceremony went on and on and Brienne still didn’t flee.

“I am his and he is mine,” she said, when the time came, and the words made perfect sense, the only thing that had made sense to her since they had arrived at King’s Landing. They were true. She was his by her own free choice and he may be hers only by default but he was hers all the same. Jaime kissed her and the crowd applauded, politely, as she took hold of his wrist and held it. Hers.

Jaime grinned then, straight at her, suddenly joyous—almost boyish—and she found herself smiling back. After that, the nightmare was over. Somehow everything became funny. The feast was a joke. She sat with Jaime and they drank wine and looked at the absurd court all around them and smiled and smiled. The bedding was only Podrick at her elbow and Bronn at Jaime’s, jostling them lightly along to her room. And there was Oathkeeper, where she had left it, waiting for her. Jaime went to the bed and sat there, looking at her.

”I never thought you’d do it,” he said, watching her in the mirror as she shoved the dress to the floor and stretched gratefully. The dress had bitten under her arms horribly. “Not really. I thought you’d run.”

”I know,” she said and he came up behind her and rested his chin on her shoulder. In the mirror, in candlelight and shadow, they didn’t look so incongruous together—his beauty dimmed, her ugliness softened. 

“Why didn’t you?” he asked.   
  
She gave him an incredulous look.

”You know why.”

He shook his head.

“I don’t,” he said. “I really don’t, Brienne. I’m—” he looked at himself in the mirror and there was such contempt in the look that it almost shocked a gasp out of her. “Years older than you. A cripple. A traitor, twice over. And you could still do so many things. There’s so much you could do without burdening yourself with me as a husband. I thought you would see all that, here. I thought you’d come to your senses.”

“You’re not a burden,” she said. Her throat tightened dangerously and she cleared it. _You’re a good man_. She couldn’t bring herself to say that, though the words came insistently into her mind. “I want you.”

Saying those words out loud made her flush and Jaime smiled teasingly in response, but there was still something wavering and unsure underneath the smile that tore at her. A cripple and a traitor. Did he really believe that?

”You’re not a traitor,” she said abruptly. “Not to me.” She swallowed salt. “Not to her. You did—you had to make a choice, and you chose. I don’t blame you for that.”

Jaime’s face darkened and he took a step away from her.   
  
”I know,” he said in a dry harsh voice. “You don’t blame me for anything, it seems.”  
  
She had no idea why he should be angry. Perhaps he thought she was lying. 

“I _don’t_ ,” she said. She didn’t want to go on with this—her head suddenly ached—but she had married him four hours ago. She owed him the truth, if he was perverse enough to want it now. “That doesn’t mean I don’t wish it had been different. I wished—I wanted—” she was getting horribly tangled and she stopped. “You couldn’t help that. And it doesn’t matter now.”

“What did you wish and want?” Jaime asked, and she felt her eyes begin to burn. Why was he so relentless? Why couldn’t he let anything go? For that long stretch of months on the island, he had let everything go, he had let her get away with every half-finished thought or murmur. And now they were back in the real world and _married_ and he was more relentless than ever.

“You know,” she said. “That you had—stayed. That you wanted to stay.”

“But I couldn’t help not staying, you think,” Jaime said, still in that harsh driving voice. “Why not?”

“Cersei,” she said helplessly. _For Cersei_. Over and over again. _For Cersei._ Why did he have to do this now? “You love—loved her. You left for her.”

”And you don’t blame me for that,” he said. “For _leaving_ you, for her.”

“We don’t choose who we love,” she answered, her voice trembling, and Jaime shut his eyes. When he opened them again, they were fierce, blazing.

“I love _you_ ,” he said. “I loved you then, and I love you now, Brienne. I loved you but I didn’t choose you. You _should_ fucking blame me for that.”

She said nothing. He had said he loved her many times, on the island and when he had asked her to marry him and at random moments on the ship, but he had never said it so angrily, daring her to contradict him. She looked again at the mirror and this time the light did nothing to soften the difference. He was still beautiful. She was still hideous, never more so than now, when tears were beginning to glimmer in her eyes and her mouth was beginning to lose its firm line.

”Brienne,” Jaime said in a gentler voice and came up behind her again. He kissed her ear. “I’m sorry. You don’t have to say anything.”

At that, anger woke in her. How dare he think her so weak?

”I still don’t know what you want me to say,” she said in as hard a voice as she could manage. “I told you—on the island—I said it didn’t matter. It doesn’t matter.”

”All right,” Jaime said and kissed her throat too. “All right. I’m sorry. It doesn’t have to matter.”

His pity appalled her. He had never conceded anything before. She jerked out of his grasp, away from the mirror, and walked to the other side of the room. The window was open and she could hear the babble of voices and laughter below—the feast was still going on, for some—and the distant noises of the city beyond. King’s Landing was never quiet, truly quiet. It was a constant pressure of noises, faces, voices, memories—always there, always demanding. She tried and failed to summon up some memory of the silence of the island.

“When do we leave for Tarth?” Jaime asked. He had come up beside her and was watching her; his anger, or whatever it was, had subsided and he looked calm and tired again.

”I don’t know,” she said reluctantly. “Tyrion—has he spoken to you?”

Jaime nodded.

”I told him I would do what you did,” he said. “Do you want to stay?”

She sighed, listening to the overlapping voices spiral up from the window. She was herself again and she knew the right answer to that question, though it made her weary to say it. Tyrion had shown her how weak the kingdom was, how fragile the bonds that held it together, and how much there was to do. And she was still a knight, sworn to defend and protect all of it.

”I think we have to.” 


	7. Chapter 7

They did go to Tarth, in the end, the summer after the wedding. Brienne had to be named Evenstar and review her father’s appointments and hear her tenants’ appeals; they could have three months, Tyrion said, to sort out her affairs on Tarth before returning to King’s Landing. After half a year of work, the Kingsguard was in a reasonable enough condition to defend the city for those three months. If no significant threats arose. 

“There are no significant threats,” Jaime said. “You worry too much.”

”Pirates,” Brienne said. The sea breeze blew fresh in her face. It was difficult to keep from smiling. “Raiders. Looters. I didn’t say I was expecting an army.”

”Pod can deal with raiders and looters,” Jaime said. “Stop worrying, and tell me about Tarth.”

It was difficult to worry, at sea, with the light on the water and Jaime close by her and three months’ freedom before them. The work had been exhausting, even with Jaime at her side and sharing all of it—recruiting for the Kingsguard, training the recruits, reviewing the city’s defences, rebuilding and replanning. The wars had shattered everything so completely: there were few whole men surviving who knew how to fight, and boys had come of age in a time when no one had leisure to train them. They had fought in wars, some of them, before ever being taught to hold a sword. She and Jaime had worked all day and then fallen into bed and slept all night; there had been little time for anything else. Now there would be time. She glanced at Jaime. The sea breeze was ruffling his hair—more grey than gold in it now—and his eyes were bright and expectant. She felt one of the unexpected waves of almost unmanageable affection that took her suddenly, sometimes, when she looked at Jaime and was caught unawares by his—by him. She turned her gaze back to the sea.

“What is it you want to know?” she asked, trying for an ordinary practical voice. “About Tarth?”

”I don’t know,” Jaime said lazily. “Are the waters really _sapphire_ blue?”

Brienne laughed.

”They’re blue,” she said. “I don’t know about sapphires. I’ve never seen any.”

”You’ve got a mirror,” Jaime said and she scowled at him, flushing. She hated gallantry and complimenting, still, and Jaime never could let an opportunity for that kind of nonsense go by.

”Your eyes are even lovelier when you glare,” he said in dulcet tones and she turned away to hide her smile. Jaime was lighter of heart than he had been in a long time, she thought. He’d been cheered by the idea of Tarth, going to Tarth, ever since Tyrion had mentioned it. She didn’t know why, what his expectations were, though she feared that he would be disappointed.

”Tarth is small,” she said, trying to warn him. “There’s my father’s—there’s our hall, our household. One market. A few villages. There’s very little to see.”

”Mm,” Jaime said, not sounding disappointed. “Tell me about—our hall. Who’s in the household? What are they like?”

“I don’t know,” Brienne said sombrely. “Ser Geraint was steward in my time but he died, I know, some years ago. Before the Long Night. And my septa—she was so old, even when I was a girl. I don’t think she can be alive.”

”What was she like?” Jaime asked. “When you were a girl.” 

“Strict,” Brienne said with a smile. “She didn’t like me.”

”Old cow,” Jaime said and she frowned at him. 

”Don’t,” she said. “She did her best for me. It wasn’t her fault.”

“What wasn’t her fault?”   
  
“That I was—you know,” she said, flustered by the suddenly sharp look that had come into his face for no reason that she could see. “The way I am.”

Jaime said nothing. He looked out to sea, his face sober and contemplative. Brienne stood and looked too, glad of the silence. She hadn’t thought of Septa Roelle in years and the memory unsettled her. _Freakish_ , she had said. _Mannish_. It was Septa Roelle who had warned her not to believe in men’s complimenting, all those years ago. She had almost forgotten that there had been a time before she knew that lesson. It felt so much a part of her now.

They came to Evenfall at dusk. There was a crowd to greet them but she recognised no one. A weary-faced man with a red beard came forward and introduced himself as Ser Roben, the last steward that her father had appointed. The letter announcing her father’s death had come from him, during the war, and she had corresponded with him about various small matters since. 

He looked at her rather warily, as well he might, but without any of the hostility she had half-feared. Who knew what version of her reputation had reached them here on Tarth? In some ways, she had dragged that name through all sorts of mud. But no one was hostile. Some were nervous, fearful, rather awed; others, especially the ones who said they remembered her as a child, were simple and welcoming. Jaime was eyed in silence by all, but without overt dislike.

Supper was in the great hall. She felt a pang when she saw her father’s chair, empty, drawn out for her, but the pang passed. The evening was peaceful. Few words were spoken, among the small company in the hall. Ser Roben asked about the journey and said a word or two about some matter in Brienne’s last letter, about a land dispute in a village south of Evenfall. One of the younger men asked for the tale of the Long Night and Brienne told it, with interjections from Jaime, ending her tale with the end of the battle. No one wanted to hear about the dragon queen and the sacking of King’s Landing; that story was too grim to relish over supper. They enjoyed the tale of the Long Night, though, its horrors too remote to really imagine but imaginable enough to be exciting. Jaime insisted on adding almost a blow-by-blow account of Brienne’s feats that night and they enjoyed that too. She wanted to stop him but she saw that the men were liking him more and more, as he talked on, and so she let him. She had forgotten what a good talker he could be, when the mood took him.  
  
“The Evenstar,” Ser Roben said in a low voice, after wine had been poured and the company had dwindled to only themselves and a few half-dozing old men at the back of the hall. “It is to be you, Lady Brienne? And not—” he glanced at Jaime. “Your lord husband?”

“Yes,” Brienne said, in a more flustered tone than she liked. She had never quite become used to that word, applied to Jaime. She saw his hint of a smile and kicked at his ankle under the table. “The King has agreed that a woman may have the title. Yes.”

“Your sons will take the name of Tarth, then?” Ser Roben asked and Brienne nodded, aware that her ears had gone scarlet and that Jaime was shaking now with silent laughter. _Sons_. The King’s letters patent had made it clear that the Evenstar and her descendants would always bear the name of Tarth but _descendants_ was an easier word, more impersonal, than _sons._

“Or daughters,” Jaime said pleasantly, to Ser Roben. “All our children will be Tarths.”

“Where are we to make these sons, then?” he said to her afterwards, following her up the stairs and not even troubling to lower his voice. “As your _lord husband_ —”

”Be quiet,” Brienne said, stifling helpless laughter herself—there had been quite a number of glasses of wine—and steering him into her room. She had not liked the idea of asking that her father’s rooms be prepared for her, so it was her own old chamber that they entered. It was startlingly unchanged. There was the long mirror and the small round of blue carpet. There were the songs and poems, neatly stacked on the table beside the bed. There was the wooden sword, and the little company of toy knights, and the small model of a castle by the window. Only the bed was different—large and canopied, quite unlike the narrow bed she had slept in as a maiden. It was strange to see such a bed here, among the artefacts of her childhood. Stranger still to see Jaime here, looking about him with that hungry expression, as if he wanted to take in everything at once. 

”Is all this yours?” he asked. He took up one of the miniature tin knights and looked at it. “Yours?”

“Yes,” she said, strangely embarrassed as he set the small knight down with a smile and turned to the mirror.   
  
“And this?”

”Yes,” she said. “That was here in my time.”

Jaime looked at it for a long moment and then at her.

“Did you hate it?” he asked quietly and she nodded, her throat constricting. She had forgotten all the hours she had spent staring into that mirror as if, by staring hard enough, she might dissolve her features into something different. Jaime held out his hand to her. “Come here.”

She went, and he drew her down onto the bed. 

”Look,” he said, nodding towards the mirror. “Look at yourself.”

”I don’t—” But, despite herself, she looked. There was Jaime, beautiful in the mirror, his eyes gleaming. There was the woman beside him, a big woman, almost as tall he was, with a broad homely face. 

“I love you,” Jaime said, watching her, and the woman in the mirror flinched as if she had been struck. 

“You don’t believe me,” Jaime said in a defeated voice. “You never believe me, do you?”

“I can’t,” Brienne said, after a long moment had passed. “I don’t—I just can’t.”

”Because of Cersei,” Jaime said wearily and Brienne shook her head.

”Because of—” her eyes fixed again on the mirror. The woman there was so familiar; her expression was so hopeless. “Me.”

“You?” Jaime’s brows drew together. “But you’re—”

“Don’t,” Brienne said. She shut her eyes against the mirror and leaned in to kiss him. He evaded the kiss, catching her face in his hand and holding her still. She opened her eyes. “I thought we were going to—”

“We are,” Jaime said. “But I want you to watch.” He turned her face back to the mirror. He was behind her. She felt a storm of heat overtake her. She’d never seen—

“ _Jaime_ ,” she said and heard him laugh shakily in her ear. He was so—he looked so—and _she—_ “I can’t—”

Afterwards, she couldn’t look at him. She let him gather her close and tuck his chin over her shoulder but she couldn’t look at him. She felt shattered, strange, unlike herself.

”Brienne,” Jaime said in her ear. 

“Go to sleep,” she said. Her voice sounded thick and small, a stranger’s. 

“I love you,” Jaime said and this time the words did strike her differently. She didn’t know what they meant, to him, but she knew they had nothing to do with pity or guilt or any of the other things she had thought explained them. It wasn’t _pity,_ the way he had looked at her tonight. 

“Go to _sleep_ ,” she said in a stronger voice.

”Do you believe me?”

She had no idea. Everything was inside out and the wrong way around just now. She couldn’t say what she believed.

”I don’t know,” she said at last, and he sighed.

”That septa of yours,” he said. “Are you sure she’s dead? I’d like to kill her myself.”

Septa Roelle had said to believe what her mirror showed her. A bubble of strange laughter rose up in her. What Septa Roelle would have thought tonight—

“She’s dead,” Brienne said and turned to face Jaime. He was smiling at her, very tenderly, and the raw feeling in her throat and chest were beginning to subside. Jaime had been hers tonight, wholly and entirely hers. She couldn’t guess at what had been between him and Cersei but she found now that she didn’t want to. Jaime was hers. She hesitated, watching him. 

”What is it?” he asked quietly. She was trying to remember the look on his face, all those years ago, when he had left her at Winterfell. That memory, so vivid for so long, was strangely blurred now. Instead she saw Jaime on the island, feverish and reaching for her. Jaime on their wedding day, expecting her to reject him. Jaime tonight in the hall, talking, with the firelight falling on his face and his gaze warm whenever it fell on her. 

“Will you say it again?” she asked and Jaime exhaled deeply, put his hand on her cheek. 

“I love you, you silly wench,” he said. “Don’t you think it’s your turn now?”

He said it lightly, half-jokingly, but the words came to Brienne as a shock. Had she really never told him she loved him? Not at Winterfell, not until she had asked him to stay. Never since. She had assumed he had known it. It was such an obvious fact about her, like her height and her ugliness. But Jaime was looking at her with something like hope in his eyes, something like fear. He really had no idea.

“Your sister,” she said and saw his eyes go wide with shock. “She told me I loved you. At the wedding—Joffrey’s wedding.”

”Did she,” Jaime said. A hint of bitterness appeared around his mouth, and then vanished. He looked at her again. “And what did you say?”

”Nothing,” she said. “I was—I hadn’t seen it myself. Until then.”

”You thought I was a good man,” Jaime said, with half a sigh. “You were so young.”

Brienne took his face in her hands, firmly.

“You _were_ a good man,” she said forcefully. “You still are.”

Jaime shook his head.

“That’s not—”

”It’s why I love you,” she managed to get out, rather stumblingly. They were horrendously difficult words to say. Jaime stopped short and grinned at her. 

“Again?” he asked. She wasn’t sure if she wanted to hit him or kiss him. But he wasn’t just being aggravating, she thought, despite the grin. He really was unsure.

”I love you,” she made herself say, more clearly this time, and Jaime’s grin widened. 

“Once more, for luck?” he suggested and she swatted him.

”Go to _sleep_ ,” she said, smiling, and he laughed.

”Yes, Lord Commander,” he said. “Lady wife.”

“I love you,” Brienne said again, and Jaime’s grin faded to something softer and darker. 

“Evenstar,” he said. “It’s a good title for you. You look—”

” _Sleep_ ,” Brienne ordered, unable to stop smiling.

Neither of them in fact slept that night, tired as they were. They talked—about her father and his, about Tarth and the Rock, about nothing and everything. At first, Jaime had half-skirted around the subject of Cersei but Brienne wouldn’t let him and his wariness faded. She saw clearly now, what Cersei had been to him and what she herself was. Cersei was in the past—beloved, broken, mad, and lost. Jaime shuddered when he talked of the fall of the Red Keep, finding Cersei’s body, and Brienne held him while he spoke of it. Later, she told Jaime about Galladon and how she had tried to be both son and daughter to her father and succeeded at neither. The night sky had lightened to morning, grey light beginning to filter through the drawn curtains, by the time they fell silent and lay looking at each other in the dawning light. Jaime’s gaze went to the window.

”Tarth,” he said and got up to open the curtains. There was the blue bay and the empty brilliant sky. Brienne got out of bed too and came to stand beside him.

”I told you,” she said. “There’s nothing to see here. Only the sea.”

“Yes,” Jaime said contentedly. He put his arm around her. “I’ve wanted to come here for years. Sapphire isle.” He shook his head. “Sapphires are nothing to it. Look at that colour.”

Brienne looked. It was the most familiar sight in the world—the view from her bedroom window—but it came to her with a fresh new beauty now, with Jaime beside her and all the harsh years of war and loss behind her. Her island. _Their_ island, now.

“I want to live here,” Jaime said. “We need to tell Tyrion. Another year, and that’s all he gets of us. We belong here.”

”Another year,” Brienne agreed. _We_. It was strange how natural that word sounded now. She had made so many vows in her life: to Renly, to Lady Catelyn, to Lady Sansa, to the King. But now it was Jaime, and Tarth, who held her. She and Jaime— _we—_ would protect Tarth together. The King, and the Stormlands, and Lady Sansa, still had her loyalty if they needed it. But her heart was no longer hers to give away.

They named her Evenstar that morning, before breakfast. It was a short ceremony, quickly concluded, and then the morning was given up to tenants and their affairs. The war had not left Tarth unscarred. There was more poverty than Brienne had known in her day, more sickness. Fewer young men. She did what she could and Jaime, surprisingly, aided her well. Sometimes she feared that he was bored—he was so easily bored—but he seemed really to listen to the old women complaining of broken roofs, the boys quarrelling over access to fishing waters, the complaints of flooded paths and broken ditches. Justice and the defence of the innocent, Brienne thought. This was what it came to, in peacetime. And Jaime lived up to the vow, as he so often had.

In the afternoon, they slipped off for a swim. The water in the cove was warm, at this time of the year, and it greeted her like an old friend. Jaime slipped in beside her and grinned with delight. They swam. At first, they raced. Then they drifted in the warmth. Jaime’s hand touched hers. For the first time in a long time, she thought of the lake on the desert island, how fiercely she had used it and mistaken that loneliness for freedom. Perhaps one day she and Jaime really might find it again, when they were old and past the age of duty, free to travel again. If they still wanted to. 

The sun beat down on them, sparkled in the blue water. Jaime was saying something about her eyes again. She smiled and splashed him and he choked with outrage and grabbed at her and then they were racing again. 

They were late to supper and the servants gave them knowing looks—even Ser Roben smirked somewhat—but it didn’t matter. That night, they were asleep within moments of reaching their bed. 


End file.
